Phone
“Gee, maybe I should think about e-books myself,” Castaldo thought.
He didnt have a Kindle, but he did have a BlackBerry. He pulled it out and looked for available applications. Sure enough, Barnes & Noble Inc. had just put up an e-reading program. Castaldo, 54, downloaded it, and within a minute, began reading Jane Austens “Pride and Prejudice.”
As others are also discovering, the North Haven, Conn., banker found e-books quite accessible without a Kindle.
“The BlackBerry is always with me,” Castaldo said. “Rather than just sitting there, if I can fill that time by reading a good book, I might do that, in addition to doing the other things I might do, like reading e-mail and Twittering.”
Thanks to Amazon.com Inc.s Kindle, e-book sales are finally zooming, after more than a decade in the doldrums.
But the pioneering device may not dominate the market for long. As Castaldo found, many phones are now sophisticated enough, and have good enough screens, to be used as e-book reading devices. In addition, e-book reading on computers is already surprisingly popular.
E-book sales reported to the Association of American Publishers have been rising sharply since the beginning of 2008, just after the release of the Kindle. Its the best sustained growth the industry has seen since the International Digital Publishing Forum began tracking sales in 2002 – a sign that e-books finally could be about to break into the mainstream.
U.S. trade e-book sales in the April to June period this year more than tripled from the amount a year ago, as reported by about a dozen publishers.
Total reported sales at wholesale prices were $37.6 million. Thats less than 2 percent of the overall book market, but the number understates e-book sales, because not all publishers contribute to the report. The figure also excludes textbooks, an area where e-books have made substantial inroads.
While other digital media like CDs, DVDs and MP3 songs showed sharp growth rates from the get-go, e-books have puttered around as a tiny fraction of overall book sales for more than a decade. In several periods, sales actually declined from year to year as publishers wavered in their commitment and interest.
The technology has also faced unique resistance from consumers because printed books work so well.
The most well-known dedicated reading devices, the Kindle and Sony Corp.s Reader, try to emulate the look of the printed page with a display technology known as “electronic ink.”
The Kindle has a wireless connection directly to Amazons store, meaning users can buy and download books to the device within minutes, much like Castaldo could do on his smart phone. The Reader lacks a wireless capability and thus needs to be connected to a computer to load books.
Amazon isnt betting solely on the Kindle. It released an iPhone app for the Kindle store in March. It has snapped up some other developers of book-reading applications for smart phones, but these programs dont use the Kindle store.
Shanna Vaughn, a university worker and voracious reader in Orange County, Calif., has been reading e-books on a computer or handheld organizer for at least ten years, but it was only an occasional habit until she got an iPhone last year. Its mainly the convenience thats winning her over: Because Vaughn can buy and download books nearly instantly to the phone, she doesnt need to plan a trip to the book store.
Vaughn, 35, is not interested in a Kindle or a Reader.
“I never really wanted something that was a single-function device. I just couldnt see spending … $300 for a device where Im sort of locked in to one retailer. Whereas my phone, that does everything.”